Blair looks less spinner, more spun

The "slips of the tongue" by a BBC journalist are a danger to democracy and journalism.

Tony Blair: More spinned against than spinning? On the evidence so far taken by a British inquiry, this is a possible finding, at least in respect to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

The investigation, by Lord Hutton, is into the circumstances surrounding the tragic death (apparently by suicide) of British scientist David Kelly.

Much of the material that has come before the inquiry would not normally become public for 30 years. Some of the information concerning security would never, normally, be released. Little wonder, then, that Lord Hutton's deliberations have attracted such interest.

The Hutton inquiry has also shed light on how the media operates in Western democracies, in this case the BBC, Britain's national broadcaster. Normally such information would never be divulged. For, unlike governments, media outlets do not release their documents for public examination after three decades. But the Hutton inquiry has enabled media consumers to look behind closed doors. It has not been an edifying sight.

Flashback: May 29, 2003. It's 6.07 am. Journalist Andrew Gilligan tells listeners to BBC Radio 4's Today program that the Blair Government deliberately "sexed up" an intelligence dossier to make a case for Britain's involvement in the coalition of the willing to rid Iraq of its WMDs and to topple Saddam Hussein's regime. He maintains that "the Government probably knew" that the material "was wrong". Gilligan advises that his anonymous source is a "senior officer" in charge "of drawing up that dossier".

Flashback: June 1, 2003. The Mail on Sunday runs a piece by Gilligan under the heading: I asked my intelligence source why Blair misled us all over Saddam's WMD. His response? One word - Campbell. The reference is to Alastair Campbell, the Blair Government's then director of communications. It turns out the content of the article, but not the heading, was cleared by the BBC.

Little wonder that Gilligan's initial verbal report, followed by his article, created outrage. For the BBC's leading current affairs radio program was alleging - on the basis of a single anonymous source - that Tony Blair and his colleagues had taken the nation to war on the basis of a lie, supported by an essentially fabricated document. Soon after it was revealed that Dr Kelly was Gilligan's sole source. There followed the personal tragedy that was the occasion for Lord Hutton's investigation.

Andrew Gilligan gave evidence to the Hutton inquiry on August 12 and again last Thursday. On the latter occasion, where he was subjected to cross-examination, Gilligan put in a shocker. The full flavour of the exchange is best judged from reading the transcript on the Hutton inquiry website
www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk

In summary, the BBC journalist openly acknowledged, or reluctantly conceded, that he had made a "slip of the tongue" during his initial broadcast - he had not intended to accuse the Blair Government of dishonesty.

Gilligan also said he had falsely described Kelly as a member of the intelligence service - it was, you've guessed it, another "slip of the tongue". He failed, however, to provide any plausible excuse for not correcting such significant errors.

There was more. Gilligan conceded that he was "quite wrong" to have dobbed in his source (Kelly) to some MPs on the British Foreign Affairs Committee. He was "under an enormous amount of pressure at the time", and, yes, it was a "mistake", on "two occasions", to "ascribe" statements to Kelly when in fact both were actually a conclusion reached by Gilligan himself.

There were also many occasions when the BBC journalist went into "cannot remember" mode. Moreover, he lost a crucial written record of his meeting with Kelly; it disappeared from his "laptop bag".

The BBC management has not emerged well from the inquiry. It made false statements. Moreover, BBC director general Greg Dyke indicated that he did not even become aware of Gilligan's May 29 broadcast until weeks after the event - even though this was a matter of considerable public controversy. Moreover, Dyke acknowledged that he had rejected the Blair Government's criticisms of Gilligan's report without investigating the matter himself.

As British media commentator David Aaronovitch acknowledged on ABC Radio National's Media Report last Thursday, the BBC is part of the "liberal establishment". In Australian parlance, this means leftist. As such it is heavily involved in what the US scholar Thomas E. Patterson has referred to as "critical journalism" or "attack journalism". This is based on the proposition that "most politicians are presumed to be incompetent, venal or deceptive, and it is the journalists' role to let everyone know that's the way it is".

He makes a compelling case that this kind of reporting has weakened "attachments to politics". It's just that the decline in "political interest has diminished interest in news" since citizens have become "as tired of negative political news as they are of negative political advertising".

Gilligan is an attack journalist par excellence. On this occasion, however, he has been caught in his own (friendly) fire. Yet he has damaged the Blair Government in the process. Many Brits (falsely) believe that they were deliberately lied to over Iraq's WMD. And few Brits know that the late David Kelly himself believed that Iraq possessed WMD and supported regime change in Baghdad. It's spin, BBC-style. But it does not do democracy or journalism any good.